City of Guelph

It’s Time #Guelph Attacks Our Geese Problem. Not For Geese To Attack Us.

Perhaps the title for this blog post is a bit provocative – I’ll admit that. But, I have received many emails as a city councillor,and now as your mayor, of some scary situations our citizens have been in with geese.

Some emails are of people being attacked, children unable to walk down their own sidewalks to go to school and so on…

Of course it’s not just those issues but health issues too. Some of our parks are becoming unbearable to be in from their poop everywhere. (Yes I said poop).

So staff are proposing we look into a policy to try and help with this situation. Thank goodness. Lots of communities have had to come to grips with this issue too and so we can learn from how they handle it, and then see what is best for Guelph. We’ll discuss it at committee on Oct 5th.

I couldn’t walk my dogs down along the Wellington path this year [from Wyndham to McDonell] due to the goose problem. Also cars were constantly held up at the intersection of Neeve and Wellington causing huge traffic jams. It’s a hard one to call, I realize that each year we take away more of their natural habitat [and once the babies reached were able to fly they left] but I am also afraid for my dogs, because I was beat up by a goose once and it wasn’t pleasant.

All very good suggestions here, I hope you are reading this Cam. There is no need for another study or more consultants, just do what works for other municipalities. Wasting money on too many studies and consultants is so like the last administration. As for the comment on why motorists didn’t just honk at the geese, I honked at geese once and this couple walking their kids in a double stroller on the sidewalk yelled profanities at me and flipped me ”the bird”.